Review: Android 4.2 is a sweeter-tasting Jelly Bean

The last version of Android to be released, 4.1, code-named "Jelly Bean," was only an incremental bump over the major 4.0 release ("Ice Cream Sandwich"). But that little bump made a big difference. Android became more or less fully realized with Ice Cream Sandwich, but Jelly Bean brought a level of polish and maturity that the platform previously lacked.

The biggest improvement for the end-user experience was "Project Butter," the name given to a group of adjustments vastly upgrading Android's responsiveness to touch input. These included adding triple buffered graphics rendering and maximizing the CPU's clock speed briefly whenever the screen is touched (there were also a few other underlying architectural improvements). Taken together, the tweaks made overall performance much more consistent in Jelly Bean. Before, Android's interface was capable of smoothness on sufficiently fast hardware (see our Optimus G review for evidence of that), but Jelly Bean brought smoothness even to older hardware like the Motorola Xoom and first-generation Kindle Fire. Using Android finally felt as good as using iOS or Windows Phone.

Now, only four months after Android 4.1 was released into the wild, the mobile operating system is getting another incremental bump. Android 4.2 carries the same "Jelly Bean" code-name as 4.1. It doesn't bring any drastic changes to the operating system and, given its quick turnaround, no one really expected it to. However, it introduces enough new features to keep Android a healthy contender in the vicious smartphone and tablet markets.

Multiuser support

On tablets, Android 4.2's biggest innovation is multiuser support. These devices are often shared between family members, but a way to keep everyone's chocolate out of everyone else's peanut butter has been generally lacking among tablets since the iPad popularized the form factor 2010. With Android 4.2, different users will be able to configure their own home screens (along with backgrounds, apps, and widgets) and application settings. Finally, there's a way to allow children to play games on the tablet without accidentally erasing all of your work e-mail.

The feature will only be coming to tablets at this point, however—speculation on exactly why has ranged from the innocuous (tablets are more likely to be shared than smartphones) to the litigious (Nokia has its name on a patent that may prevent the feature's implementation on phones). Google informs us the feature will also be coming to 7-inch tablets, so the Nexus 7 should gain multiuser support as soon as its 4.2 update drops.

Currently, we have as many questions as you do about how Android's implementation works: what are its storage requirements? What are its memory usage requirements? Can apps be shared between accounts? Are usernames and passwords set locally, or can you sign in with Google accounts as in Chrome OS? What security measures prevent one user from getting notifications and other data intended for another user? Unfortunately, we don't have any answers at the moment, because the Android 4.2 build that enables multiuser support won't be delivered to Nexus 10 tablets before they begin shipping on November 13. At that point, we'll install the update and publish a follow-up report.

Notifications

Pull-down notification panels have almost always been a part of the Android package. Apple even took a page from Google's playbook by introducing pull-down notifications in its iOS 5 update. Notifications are the gateway to the Android brain, enabling users to keep an eye on what their handset is doing. They have proven to be an unobtrusive way of delivering essential information.

In Android 4.1, Google enhanced notifications panels by making more of them expandable and enabling users to work within them without having to click too many times. Users are no longer just checking to see that someone tweeted them. Instead, they can see exactly what was tweeted, and then reply by launching the Twitter application from the pull-down shade. Notifications aren’t deleted unless they’re swiped away or dealt with, so you don't have to worry about missing something.

Enlarge/ My name is Florence Ion and these are my Quick Settings options. Any questions?

Now in 4.2, Google has followed OEMs like Samsung and LG by including a Quick Settings menu. As the snappy name indicates, Quick Settings allows users instant access to the most frequently changed settings—brightness, connecting to Wi-Fi, checking data usage, displaying battery life, toggling Airplane mode or Bluetooth, and initiating the wireless display. (That last one is part of Android 4.2's Miracast feature, which you can read more about on page three.)

Google previously hid these settings behind another screen, requiring users to tap twice before they can get to it from the Notifications shade. The ability to adjust the screen brightness in a pinch will save a lot of eyes from blinding white screens, though we prefer the way manufacturers like Samsung and LG have kept settings part of the pull-down menu. Google still including the power control widget for users to affix to their Home screens if the double-tap or double-finger swipe is one too many actions.

Both the Notifications and Quick Settings panels are now also accessible from the lock screen of a phone or tablet without an unlock PIN or password. For security reasons, this is disabled on devices with passcodes however. It's a nice touch if you're not locking your screen, though you obviously run a huge risk of data theft when you use a phone or tablet without a password. We recommend that you ignore this feature entirely in favor of securing your data.

New 10-inch tablet user interface

Android 4.2, at least on the Nexus 10, formally retires the Android tablet UI originally introduced in Honeycomb (Android 3.0). This interface survived with few functional tweaks all the way up until Android 4.1, as we saw when we installed the first Jelly Bean update to a Motorola Xoom tablet.

Enlarge/ The old 10-inch tablet user interface in Android 4.1, as seen on the Motorola Xoom. Note the application switcher on the left side of the screen.

Andrew Cunningham

This interface shared many features in common with the phone and 7-inch tablet UI on other Android devices, but it moved things around a bit. The navigation buttons were still stored at the bottom of the screen, but in the lower-left corner rather than in the center. Notifications were accessed by swiping up from the lower-right corner of the screen rather than down from the top. The application switcher appeared on the left side of the screen rather than taking up the whole thing. There were a few other changes, but these were the biggest—the end result was something with the same features as an Android phone, but requiring different actions to access common features.

Enlarge/ The new application switcher now takes up the entire screen, as it does on phones and 7-inch tablets.

Andrew Cunningham

The Nexus 7 made the jump to a more phone-like user interface, and the Nexus 10 follows suit. The new user interface makes some tweaks however, since widescreen tablets will most often be used in landscape mode. But the basics work just as they do on the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7: navigation buttons centered in the middle of the screen, a persistent row of applications just above that, and notifications at the top of the screen. There are still some differences between the 7-inch and 10-inch tablet interfaces, all of which are easier to show than to tell.

Enlarge/ The Nexus 10 in landscape mode, populated with widgets and icons. Note that the "dock" is across the bottom of the screen in this mode, reflecting widescreen tablets' tendency to be used primarily in landscape mode.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The Nexus 7's screen in landscape mode, which was introduced in the Android 4.1.2 update. The dock rotates to the right side of the screen here, keeping it thumb-adjacent.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The Nexus 10 in portrait mode. The application dock stays at the bottom of the screen, but there's at least a row of wasted home screen space (note the padding above and below the widgets).

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The Nexus 7 makes much more efficient use of its space in portrait mode, reflecting the tendency of smaller tablets to be used in this mode.

Andrew Cunningham

The notification center also acts slightly different on a 10-inch tablet than on a phone—the standard notification center is accessed by swiping down from the top on the left half of the screen, while the new quick settings menu is accessed by swiping down from the right half. On the Nexus 4 (and other Android phones, when and if they receive an Android 4.2 update), the quick settings menu is accessed via a button in the normal notification center or by swiping down from the top of the screen with two fingers.

The experience of actually using a 10-inch Android tablet doesn't change tremendously with the new UI. The persistent row of applications across the bottom of the screen slightly reduces the amount of vertical space available for widgets. This may be a worthwhile sacrifice to make—otherwise, applications look and run just as they did before.

Some may argue that the new UI isn't the best use of a 10-inch tablet's real estate, but this strikes us as a concession to usability and consistency on Android's part. The old 10-inch UI took familiar elements from the phone UI and put them in unfamiliar places. With the new UI, anyone who picks up and uses a Nexus 7 or a Nexus 4 will automatically be able to pick up and play with a Nexus 10 without needing a re-learn anything. This is a small but important step in selling Android users on the larger tablet. After all, an iPad looks and operates mostly like a blown-up version of the iPhone and iPod touch. In the long run, this certainly helped keep Apple consumers comfortable as they move between devices.

But the biggest question: will an Android 4.2 update to existing 10-inch tablets change the user interface to the new phone-style or allow partners to continue using the old UI to prevent user frustration? Having something you use every day suddenly change can be jarring. But even if it's no longer officially supported by Google, it's a fair bet third-party launchers will be able to re-enable it if you really prefer.

158 Reader Comments

I'm currently a fully-integrated iOS user (after having been a fully integrated Android user through 2.3), but I find myself more and more drawn to Android's ecosystem as versions move forward. I find iOS6 to be totally without true innovation and Jelly Bean to be genuinely new and interesting. In particular, the multiple accounts available on tablets seems like a real win for many practical purposes.

I think the next 12 months will see a lot of movement between iOS and Android as Google finally gets its act together and starts delivering a truly competitive and broadly appealing ecosystem that attracts the casual users that Apple currently owns.

Excellent writeup. I was very surprised after having a Galaxy S3 for a while when I got a Nexus 7 and realized that the quick settings in the Notification Shade wasn't actually a stock 4.x feature. Very happy that they are adding it. Not having had a Samsung phone before I had no preconceived notions of TouchWiz, but the fact that I assumed some of it was actually stock tells me that Samsung has really improved it. It's not like HTC Sense where the disconnect between stock and Sense was (still is?) glaringly obvious.

I wasn't unhappy with Gingerbread on my old HTC EVO, but the improvements across the board in 4.x have been extremely impressive.

I'm not an iOS fan but it's far from the animal it was in v3, the last time I used it heavily. Apple might not appreciate being forced to actually compete on functionality but it drives innovation on all sides and that's a good thing.

I'm also a current iOS user pondering dipping a toe into the Android world. I am a bit confused about the carrier controlling OS upgrades. Is this just for US carriers or everywhere? (I'm in Canada) Is there any way around this limitation? What about for unlocked devices?

Other than that concern, there are definitely some interesting features I'd like to try out.

I'm also a current iOS user pondering dipping a toe into the Android world. I am a bit confused about the carrier controlling OS upgrades. Is this just for US carriers or everywhere? (I'm in Canada) Is there any way around this limitation? What about for unlocked devices?

Other than that concern, there are definitely some interesting features I'd like to try out.

Basically, Nexus devices get all the updates (The Nexus One, god bless it, capped out due to hardware limitations after a while) soon after they are released, and everything else trails for a a year or just never gets the updates. So if you have a Nexus device you are fine.

The only way around this is to root your phone (make sure it has an unlocked bootloader, most do) and install CyanogenMod yourself if it is available for your phone.. The only problem there is you are basically taking over management of your phone and its updates, which is fine if that's what you want to do.

Can't say I'm a fan of the screen height loss from the status on top bar, in addition to software buttons.In phones, the button bar isn't large enough to encompass the status bar functions. The same can't be said on a tablet. Either this leads other manufacturers away from software buttons, or we lose yet more vertical space on an already wide tablets in landscape.There's something to be said of the advantage of software buttons, but that empty button bar in a 10" device is not it: there are far better uses for all that empty space.

It doesn't matter whist Android has until cashiers allow you to be in control of your upgrades. I have a 1 year old phone running a 3 years old Android. No upgrade path for me. Thank you US Cellular

I am sure you will tire of hearing this but you could root your phone and depending on how powerful your phone is slap the latest and greatest of the Android OS versions on to your phone. I did that with my old Evo 4G and I was running Ice Cream Sandwich on it till I got my new Evo 4G LTE phone.

I'm also a current iOS user pondering dipping a toe into the Android world. I am a bit confused about the carrier controlling OS upgrades. Is this just for US carriers or everywhere? (I'm in Canada) Is there any way around this limitation? What about for unlocked devices?

Other than that concern, there are definitely some interesting features I'd like to try out.

Basically, Nexus devices get all the updates (The Nexus One, god bless it, capped out due to hardware limitations after a while) soon after they are released, and everything else trails for a a year or just never gets the updates. So if you have a Nexus device you are fine.

The only way around this is to root your phone (make sure it has an unlocked bootloader, most do) and install CyanogenMod yourself if it is available for your phone.. The only problem there is you are basically taking over management of your phone and its updates, which is fine if that's what you want to do.

About Miracast, is this supported in software? Can I stream to a pc using it? If this is built into the os and I have an S3 why wouldn't it work once cm 10 is updated to 4.2?

No one said it wouldn't work.

That's why I'm asking, I didn't know. I just want to make sure it wasn't a half baked implementation into routers only or something crazy like that. there is no real information on it witha 15 second google search and I'm sure that if I spent a half hour I could find out but I'm at work so I asked the simple question =)

If you are going to say Google Now is Google's answer to Siri, you have to say that Siri was Apple's answer to Google Voice Search. Much of Google Now's functionality (with respect to voice queries) has been around for far longer than Siri.

I'm also a current iOS user pondering dipping a toe into the Android world. I am a bit confused about the carrier controlling OS upgrades. Is this just for US carriers or everywhere? (I'm in Canada) Is there any way around this limitation? What about for unlocked devices?

Other than that concern, there are definitely some interesting features I'd like to try out.

It's worse than that actually. You are subject to the whim of *both* the carrier and the manufacturer. Don't count on getting much support if you buy a low-mid range Android phone. For example, the HTC Magic I got was updated from 1.5 to 1.6 everywhere except in Taiwan, aka where HTC is headquartered, because HTC didn't feel the need to. Sufficient to say I'll never buy another HTC phone ( that doesn't have a Google/Nexus logo accompanying it).

But with Nexus 4 priced so low, it should be the Android phone to buy if you want to switch, then all these will be a non-issue for you (assuming you are not on a CDMA network).

Multi-user features and updated security are the primary reasons I'm excited about this update. The quick settings don't really matter to me as there are already decent ways of doing this. The rest of it is really just fluff.

I'm also a current iOS user pondering dipping a toe into the Android world. I am a bit confused about the carrier controlling OS upgrades. Is this just for US carriers or everywhere? (I'm in Canada) Is there any way around this limitation? What about for unlocked devices?

The carriers nearly universally control the updates, basically by not handing them out, since they already have your money and don't care. Since the OS is provided by Google, then "wrapped up" by the manufacturers, then vetted by the carriers, there are a lot of spots in the chain for companies to ignore your device.

The solution is to just get a Nexus device, then you remove the carriers and manufacturers from the process. If that's not an option, you can always look for an updated version that doesn't come from your carrier. It's not as hard as it sounds, and occasionally you get neat features that aren't in the stock versions anyway.

As for unlocked devices, by which I assume you mean some foreign Galaxy Note or something that you buy off Amazon or Ebay, you're generally going to be on your own for the updates for that anyway. It's not like Samsung makes a stock version of Android for the Note available on their site, because that version wouldn't work with any of the carriers--it'd be missing LTE drivers and things. Similarly, it's not like Google makes a stock Android available for all phones ever, because there are a million different Android phones, and again, missing drivers and things.

I'm also a current iOS user pondering dipping a toe into the Android world. I am a bit confused about the carrier controlling OS upgrades. Is this just for US carriers or everywhere? (I'm in Canada) Is there any way around this limitation? What about for unlocked devices?

I have an HTC One X with Rogers. We were asking Rogers for Android 4.0.4 in August (http://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/fo ... d-id/11510) and we still don't have it. Android 4.1 is released for the HTC One X overseas but I doubt that we wil see that update this year. Whatever you hear about United States carriers holding back upgrades is even worse for us here.

And no, don't listen to people who tell you to just root it and install a custom rom. I have doubts whether Cyanogenmod will ever be stable as they seem to be having an impossible time keeping up with Android releases and I have not been able to find any other roms that have necessary features (camera, decent battery, working phone, etc).

The HTC One X is an amazing phone but the timeliness of the upgrades is so bad that I can't recommend this phone to anyone. The issue appears to be a problem with HTC compounded by glacially slow moving Rogers.

I'm also a current iOS user pondering dipping a toe into the Android world. I am a bit confused about the carrier controlling OS upgrades. Is this just for US carriers or everywhere? (I'm in Canada) Is there any way around this limitation? What about for unlocked devices?

I have an HTC One X with Rogers. We were asking Rogers for Android 4.0.4 in August (http://communityforums.rogers.com/t5/fo ... d-id/11510) and we still don't have it. Android 4.1 is released for the HTC One X overseas but I doubt that we wil see that update this year. Whatever you hear about United States carriers holding back upgrades is even worse for us here.

And no, don't listen to people who tell you to just root it and install a custom rom. I have doubts whether Cyanogenmod will ever be stable as they seem to be having an impossible time keeping up with Android releases and I have not been able to find any other roms that have necessary features (camera, decent battery, working phone, etc).

The HTC One X is an amazing phone but the timeliness of the upgrades is so bad that I can't recommend this phone to anyone. The issue appears to be a problem with HTC compounded by glacially slow moving Rogers.

Not to decry your experience, which is valid, but: HTC phones seem to get the raw end in this respect, other brands tend to be easier when it comes to custom ROMs.

I'll just roll in to gripe about that weird side homescreen dock on the Nexus 7 in landscape. Hate. It. And, there's apparently no way to turn off the landscape homescreen without enabling rotation lock for the entire device. (Apparently a 3rd party launcher is in my future, unless one of you guys knows how to do this)

I don't know about America/Canada, but here in the UK there are ways of getting non-carrier screwed phones but still on subsidised contracts.

The likes of dialaphone and carphone warehouse resell contracts from the major networks, but they provide the handsets themselves.

So, for me, that allowed me to get an HTC One X on a 12 month contract, the phone was free and I pay £36 ($50 ish) a month (for 500 minutes, 500 MB). But, best of all, the phone is a generic english one, so I get updates from HTC without vodafone having anything to do with it, and there is no vodafone crapware bloat on my phone.

It doesn't matter whist Android has until cashiers allow you to be in control of your upgrades. I have a 1 year old phone running a 3 years old Android. No upgrade path for me. Thank you US Cellular

Root phone. See if there's a current build of Cyanogen Mod for your phone. Problem solved.

Find out that there isn't a current build of Cyanogenmod for your phone. Problem permanent.

suryad wrote:

I am sure you will tire of hearing this but you could root your phone and depending on how powerful your phone is slap the latest and greatest of the Android OS versions on to your phone. I did that with my old Evo 4G and I was running Ice Cream Sandwich on it till I got my new Evo 4G LTE phone.

Has nothing to do with power. There are phones perfectly capable of running the new OS that have neither official nor third-party updates available. And not crazy off-brand budget models...at least I don't think the HTC Incredible 2 is a crazy off-brand model. But even rooting you're still stuck with CM7 or other Gingerbread ROMs, unless you're willing to accept some pretty significant risk of bugs. To my knowledge CM9/CM10 will probably never come to my phone. It was less than a year old when ICS dropped.

Though looking at Again's post maybe HTC is just worse in this respect than most.

So yeah, there's a start. If you're looking at dipping into the Android pool, avoid HTC like the plague. Sounds like Nexus phones are good for updates, but IIRC they've moved away from expandable SD storage.

So I take it from the article that Android is catching up to the competition, but has not yet succeeded it? No reason to switch from ios yet?

This almost sounds like trolling, but I'll give the serious answer: there's no "catching up" at this point, some things Android does better, some iOS does better. Which you choose depends on what matters more to you.

After my experience (see above) I'm strongly considering jumping over to the iOS side...I've re-evaluated just how much expandable storage matters to me (it was the deciding factor when I picked up my piece of HTC garbage).

I hope I can activate the Nexus 10 UI with the dock at the bottom of the screen in landscape mode on my Nexus 7. Thanks to the case I have, I use it almost exclusively in landscape mode. It quite annoys me when I'm forced into portrait mode by some apps.

Or at least allow me to switch the dock to the left side since I'm left-handed (: